This 30-Enginee Rocket Created The Largest Non-Nuclear Explosion in History 

please dont put that pointless red web as an effect. I think I speak for most of us when I say I want just the footage.

vintage artifact footage does not need "vintage artifact footage" filter to boost it's vintage artifact footage feel.

The N-1 explosion actually got knocked off the bottom of Wikipedia's list of the largest non-nuclear explosions by the ammonium nitrate detonation in Beirut last year. The problem is that rocket fuel only achieves its full energetic potential when mixed efficiently, which a random explosion does not do.

The Halifax explosion was the largest non-nuclear explosion. This happened decades before the n1 rocket was even conceived. The figures they they used for the N1 rocket disaster was as if the rocket fuel and oxidizer was perfectly mixed then ignited. This was not a detonation it was a deflagration, it didn't you explode it just burned really fast

Def not feeling this “red vein filter” for the vintage video clips

The excessive amount of fake film artifacting is beyond distracting, especially that red veiny thing that pops up every 30 seconds.

Largest non nuclear accidental explosion in history was Halifax Harbour wasn’t it?

The largest accidental non-nuclear explosion in history occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917, when two ships (one carrying explosives) collided. That was nearly 3 kilotons of TNT equivalent.

'Five seconds, flight normal. Ten seconds, flight normal. Fiftee,...BLYAT!!!' 😁

Stop mixing in footage of Soyuz rockets and the Saturn V rocket while you’re talking about the N1. The Soyuz especially is nowhere near the size of the N1.

Click bait and red vein effects ruined what could have been a decent tale.

It was nice to have a story about the actual program instead of just the single explosion, but there are so many inaccuracies in this relative to the information that I know (statement in the title that it was the largest explosion, inaccurate footage), that it's hard to actually believe the rest of the information.

The largest non-nuclear explosion in history occurred on the evening of June 17, 1997. It was on that fateful day that my ex-wife made the terrible mistake of eating Taco Bell twice in one day.

Might want to put an epilepsy warning on that cheesy, flashing red lightning effect. Or stop doing it.

RE: The documentary footage at 3:56 (a bit of trivia) Facing the camera are Nikolai Rukavishnikov (Russia) on the left, and Georgi Ivanov (Bulgaria) on the right. They were the crew of the Soyuz 33 mission that launched on April 10th, 1979. Their flight was intended for docking with the Salyut 6 orbital station. However, due to a serious engine failure, the docking couldn't be performed. Additionally, their return was put into serious doubt and, in the end, was dramatic and very risky, to say the least. After staying in orbit for just short of two days, they had to re-enter the atmosphere at an extremely steep angle. Moreover, they had to perform a manual landing for the first -- and so far, the only -- time in the history of space flight.

Actually the larges explosion was an industrial accident in Henderson Nevada. It made the fuel for the Space Shuttle. When the Challenger accident happen, they didn't stop making the chemical. So they stored it at the plant in giant binds outside. It somehow found a spark and exploded all of the chemical. The blast leveled the plant killing the plant manager and a security guard. The explosion was the same as a 1 megaton bomb. It broke windows on the Las Vegas strip over 10 miles away. I was in the plant next to it and outside. It knocked me on my ass about 10 feet away. I still have hearing lose from the accident.

Fun fact: the Apollo F1 incorporated a baffle design that helped distribute fuel evenly across the nozzle as kerosene and lox was pumped into the engine. The Soviets couldn't replicate that design and instead distributed a similar amount of thrust over a series of smaller engines. The problem with that many engines is it likely lead to an unstable design that caused the catastrophe.

Super Heavy sitting in the high bay: Hold my high bay brew

I think Curious Droid also has a video on this subject. Correction: MegaProjects by Simon Whistler.

Looks like I see some footage of Energia, potentially with Polyus, and a Saturn V.

Arguably, the Soviet Union lost the space race in 1958, when the USA created NASA. The creation of NASA gave the US a single agency for coordinating and planning all aspects of its non-military space programme : propulsion, guidance, telemetry, aerodynamics, astronaut selection and training, and so on. In the USSR, there were at least five different design bureaux that, although compelled to work together, often came up with different ideas about the best way forward, and always had to prioritise the military applications of their work above the civilian aspects. The early lead taken by the Soviets was a tribute to the political nous of Sergei Korolev, who managed to get all the different bureaux pulling in the same direction despite the competition between them, and despite the abysmally-low level of funding. Vasiliy Michin was Korolev's deputy, and he was extremely capable in that role. However, his assumption of Korolev's mantle after Korolev's death in (I think) 1966 was a poor fit. He wasn't half the politician that Korolev had been, and he suffered under the pressure to perform. I can't imagine what his fate might have been had he told his superiors he couldn't do the job. If he had told his superiors that the timescales were simply unrealistic, he might have soon found himself on a train to Siberia.

“ Hold my beer” said SpaceX’s Starship.

I don't like the cracked film effect.

I have participated in multiple aerospace failure review boards. Usually the cause is simple: FOD, grounding, shielding or latent defect from poor handling.

This was actually only the eighth largest non nuclear explosion. The Halifax harbour explosion in 1917 was 5 times greater.

Clickbait, this was not the largest non-nuc expl by far. If you'd written largest space explosion, it'd be dead on.

The pepcon explosion was larger. They actually stored rocket fuel and had way too much because shuttle flights were paused because of Challenger. They had way more than 30 engines worth

On the occasions when it flew correctly if momentarily, the N1 fairly leapt off the pad. Problems too numerous to list doomed the program, but the *idea* was sound.

What is with the ugly pulsing red vein film grain all over this? It made me think I had burst a blood vessel due to the amount of alcohol I've been drinking lately.

As a retired engineer over time I have seen many "short cuts" taken during design development which result in death and destruction. "We have to save time and money"! Ka-Boom!

Correction @2:26: The primary objective of Apollo 9 was to test the Lunar Module (LM), not the Saturn V.

As far as non-nuclear explosions, the explosion of Krakatoa in 1888 was the largest non nuke, and natural explosion in recorded history, with the possible exception of Santorini.

Seems insane to have that many rocket motors on one rocket and not expect one of them to fail.

Title is clickbait and incorrect. The explosion was ONE of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history but was certainly not the largest. Saying that it was in the title is simply dishonest.

In a stroke W Von Braun's concept of boosters with dozens of engines was proven unworkable. Far to complex to get 30 engines to all work together. American engineers had a hard enough time getting 5 to play nice with each other.

Wiley Coyote teared up and his troughs read --- (BEAUTIFULLY)

I'm afraid, you got a lot of details wrong here. Among others the total fuel load of the N1 was in the neighborhood off 2500 tons RP1 + LOX where the 1st stage alone has like 2000 tons of fuel, not just 400 tons. The rocket came down broadside and of course exploded completely. It had a total flight time of about 23 s and did not collapse on the launchpad. Lots of unrelated footage like Saturn V and others while available footage of the 4 N1 missions is missing. There's a lot of room for improvement here.

i guess Beirut and Tonga did not let this video age gracefully.

I do like the channels but do really have to use a factually incorrect title as click bait? 🤔

I realize this is a discussion of the N1 rocket.... several points a few seconds of the first Energia with Polyus is shown while the narrator is speaking (the rocket with the black missile looking payload attached to it's side). Amazing that nobody was harmed when this candle got feisty.

There was a lot of Red Communist Lightning all over the 60's! I'm surprised everyone and everything didn't blow up back then. 😳

A very powerful rocket and a much more powerful metaphor.

I was watching a few of these Dark whatever channel videos and was always wondering where all the footage came from. After watching this video, it's clear that most of the footage in these videos are just constantly recut, after effected, irrelevant footage probably downloaded from other YT videos. There was very little representation of the 5L rocket. Much of the Roscosmos footage was of Soyuz rockets or altered shots of NASA rockets included what looked like a distant and granular shot of the Space Shuttle's external fuel tank. Not to mention the writing had glaring holes in the story, covered far better by Chris Johnson's reply. The topics are interesting as there undoubtedly countless "dark" stories from the cold war era. But at least get the facts and footage straight. I can understand that a lot of the topics don't really have great available footage, but considering the rate at which these videos are being posted it's clear there is very little research being done. They feel like fan (non)fiction based on incomplete knowledge. The author should probably consider doing collabs or research with notable YT personalities like Scott Manley or Paul Shillito (Curious Droid) who are quite knowledgeable on the space race topics.

I love the way the narrator narrates

False click-bait title lol, there were MANY larger non-nuclear explosions. Halifax was ~5 times more powerful, and even the recent explosion in Beirut was larger.

The largest controlled non-nuke yield was some 4.2-4.3KT TNT equivalent of the Minor Scale test. The largest accident, Halifax explosion at about 3KT.

I may despises the Soviet Union but wow, cool space stuff is always cool in my book.

@2:26 Apollo 9 was the manned test of the LM, the Saturn V had already been flown 3 times prior

Why can't you slow down?

I always love the staged video of Korolev speaking into a microphone with the accent light on the studio wall behind him.

30 engines, what could go wrong? I guess it IS rocket science!

"Near nuclear" For context: this explosion released somewhere between 2 - 5 TJ of energy. The fission device detonated at Los Alamos on July 16th 1945 produced 100 TJ of energy....the Tsar Bomba, the largest explosion created by man, had an approximate energy release of 210 - 240 PETAjoules. ....near...nuclear.

The rapid fire style of the narrator is on occasion, difficult to understand due to the slurring of "s" and "sh" throughout the narration. Once this starts to be noticed, it becomes quite annoying.

Best channel on youtube, dont change a thing

Largest non-nuclear explosion is all subjective on what you are classifying as the explosion. If you are talking "Largest ARTIFICIAL non-nuclear explosion" then history is pointing to The Halifax incident as top dog. If you are talking "Largest non-nuclear explosion" then you have to add naturally occurring explosions like volcanoes. That puts Krakatoa in the list in human history and the various super-volcanoes if you are talking Earth History. Basically what I'm saying here..... we need to define our parameters better for claims of largest whatever.

You can read the real story in Boris Chertok's book "Rockets and People" (four volumes). Chertok was one of the founding members of the Soviet space program and presided over the last N1 launch. The book is available for free from NASA in several ebook formats and NASA calls it the definitive history of the Soviet program.

Not sure this was the most powerfull non-nuclear explosion ever, i think it was a fireworks factory.

It’s a bit of a nit, but when listing the hallmarks of Apollo 8, 9 and 10, Apollo 9 was summed up as “testing the Saturn V”. The primary goal of Apollo 9 was deployment and crewed testing of the lunar module in orbit. The Saturn V had already proven itself over the course of the Apollo 4, 5 (unmanned) and 8 (circumlunar orbit) missions. But good work on a nice doc on one of the most interesting and overlooked aspects of the space race.

Clickbait? In tons of TNT equivalent Tianjin=400 N1=600 Texas City=800 Beirut=800 Fauld=2000 Halifax=3000

I've seen all that footage in countless documentaries, they're crystal clear. I thought this channel was ok, ........

Enginee!! Engineeeeeeeeeeeee!! Awesome video. Even if the title is misspelled... Love this channel. All the hard work is always appreciated.

An explosion isn’t “apocalyptic” if it’s not on the scale of the actual apocalypse… the literal undoing of all things undoable. The lt. colonel who said he witnessed the “end of the world” must have had zero to no imagination lol.

Excellent. Thank you!

08:39 That "foreign particle" was the partially consumed bashed borscht & pimento loaf sandwich Comrade Yuri Vorshlinkovsky absent-mindedly left sitting on the liquid oxygen thruster coolant line, the previous afternoon. Suffice to say, Comrade Yuri was never seen nor heard from again...

There was nothing artificial about that explosion

"Halifax generated an output of 2.9 Kilotons where N1 generated 6.93." Correct.

I swear there’s prob dead Russians on the moon or more likely still floating into the universe abyss.

"... Apollo 9 tested the Saturn V..."? Uh - no. The Saturn V unmanned was Apollo 4 which went well. Apollo 5 was unmanned using a Saturn 1B with tests of the Lunar Module in earth orbit. Apollo 6 was another unmanned Saturn V test but suffered from pogoing as well as a second stage engine failure and subsequent shut down of another engine (due to a cross wiring when they tried to shut down the bad engine) so it limped into orbit with only three of the five J2 engines. Apollo 7 was a Saturn 1B and the first manned flight.... The first manned flight of a Saturn V WAS the Apollo 8 mission around the moon. That was interesting since on the return flight Lovell did what engineer Margaret Hamilton feared - entering the wrong sequence of commands in the DSKY which caused the capsule to think it was back on the landing pad. Apollo 9 tested the lunar module docking and extraction from the third stage in Earth orbit. Apollo 10 did the same thing at the moon as well as scouring sites for actual landing. Apollo 11 did the moon landing. Apollo 12 also landed on the moon, but suffered a lightening hit on launch that jeopardized the mission. Apollo 13 suffered a catastrophic failure due to a short in one of the Service Module's O2 tanks when doing a cryo stir. Apollo 14 was the first to land in the lunar highlands. Apollo 15 was the first J mission and the first to use a Lunar Rover. Apollo 16 was a follow on to 15, and Apollo 17 - the last mission to the moon - was the first to have an actual geologist on board. So get your facts straight. I really grow tired of the deluge of crap out there that is just not accurate.

Well, if they left the capsule loose, it might have made it to the moon after being on top of that much force...

Actual second by second crystal clear footage of the N-1 launch failure and explosion exists. In fact it’s all over RU-vid. Just search for Soviet N-1 explosion. For some reason this Dark5 video includes none of it.

The Soviet Inferiority Complex was just massive and it was easy to manipulate.

There are actually really great 3D animations of that crash. Surprised they where not used here.

ROSCOSMOS(CCP at the time) had some of the craziest ideas and boy do i wish i could've been alive to see some of the shit they made

Did you add the film glitch effects to make it look more "authentic"?

I thought I produced the largest non nuclear explosion on the toilet today after I had some taco bell.

Simplicity is the shortest point between two lines

Great piece. Thank you. Ironically, today, SpaceX employs the “test to destruction and iterate” methodology used so successfully by the Soviets.

Hey, can you give evidence links? I wanna study it a little more…

Regardless so much was learned during the space race and many many things were invented because of it that is used today around the world. Wish we had that push today. Elon is definitely a blast from the past..just enjoying every facet of the process.

US also had failed spacecrafts that ended in catastrofe. Challenger and Columbia

Didn't the US eventually buy a bunch of leftover N1 rocket engines from the Russian government and made them work? I know we've bought engines from them, just can't remember what they were.

The voice of the narrator is strangely hysterical and unclear at the same time.

I give channels two chances. You used one today. Clickbait is beneath you.

Kinda sounds like a micro machine commercial. I actually like the way you narrate your videos and they are very interesting and informative. Bravo sir

Always love this channel's content

Beirut: 'hold my beer'

Hopefully Spacex Starship would not end up like N1 on its Orbital test launch

8:20 In a world where entire ship loads of explosives have exploded, there is no way this rocket blast was one of the most powerful non-nuclear blasts in the world. Damn, you even forgot about the ammonium nitrate blast in Lebanon.

A Great Topic, but............ What if the Soviets, regardless of amount of money spent, and setbacks, continued and did land on the Moon?? What would have happened then???

I'm thinking with this video never let the truth get in the way of a good story. The N1 was definitely not the largest non Nuke boom.

Teaching (not irony ;) ) of this is that the Soviets never actually came up with a rocket concept of their own that would have worked properly or been used in practice. Even the Soyuz rocket, despite being the most used and one of the safest (these days..) was just an R-7 ballistic missile that was fully based on the concepts developed by German scientists who had worked on the V2 originally and kept working for Soviets after the war, continuing their work. Not that it was much different for Americans, they just got lucky to capture the head of the program to then head NASA and take them to the moon. Everything that both sides achieved in the early space race was ultimately German engineering.

That explosion in Beirut was a real banger 💥

The Beruit explosion was the largest. I'm sick of your channels constant click bait titles!! You have interesting content, why be shady?? Unsubbed

Great story, thanks! Video footage is just gravy on the top.

Why you speak in such a strange way ?

B roll is confusing showing is the Saturn 5 while talking about the M1 rocket.

What on earth are the red veins for? Very very disteacting.

A similar explosion happened on the 24th of October 1960 when a R-16 missile prototype exploded on its launchpad. There were around 92 casualties.

What the HELL is it with all the ridiculous red "veins" overlaid on the footage?? If you think it's to enhance it's vintage credibility you are dead wrong !! It's distracting and annoying. Keep it up and you'll lose a subscriber (and from reading other comments re. this "special effect", I won't be the only one).

What is all the flashing red "spider webs" in the video? Is this effect original to the videos? If so, there is image processing software that could have eliminate that.